NB: This list, compiled because it's the 10th Observer Food Monthly Awards this year, is not ranked. These 20 are all equal. They're here because they serve up great, interesting food.
15: The Company Shed, West Mersea, Essex
There are no-frills restaurants. And then there's the Company Shed which serves up some of the freshest seafood available in Britain. The clue's in the name: it's a spartan slat board affair down by the water's edge on Mersea island, off the Essex coast, which is reached by a causeway that gets submerged at high tide.
The shed is a spin-off from Richard Haward's Oyster Company, so the natives and rocks are filtered on site alongside the crab, which are all but boiled to order. They supply a couple of hot dishes, plus platters of prawns and smoked salmon, cutlery, crockery and glassware. You bring your own wine, bread and condiments, if you want something exotic. A complete gem.
The Company Shed, 129 Coast Road, West Mersea, Essex. No bookings. Cash or cheque only. 01206 382 700; the-company-shed.co.uk. Meal for two £45
14: The Sportsman, Seasalter, Kent
The Sportsman, on the low, scrubby north Kent shore at Seasalter just outside Whitstable, is probably the most influential restaurant in Britain you've never heard of. No matter. Lots of other people have heard of it. There are stories about The Sportsman: of the four Texan ladies who, reading about it in an American food magazine, hired a black cab from the Dorchester in London to drive them all the way there and back again; of the Japanese food bloggers who make the pilgrimage to photograph the dishes; of the huge-name chefs who make a point of coming here when they fly in from around the world each year, for the annual announcement of The World's 50 Best Restaurants.
And if you made the trip to see what all the fuss was about? What would you make of it? At first you would be forgiven for being a little bemused. The Sportsman is a big-boned old pub. The best it could ever hope for is to be called handsome. It has bare tables, and bare floorboards. There is a blackboard of dishes, to be ordered from the bar. These read as gussied up gastro pub classics: mussel and bacon chowder, crispy duck with chilli salsa, roast chicken with bread sauce and chestnuts. All of these are more than accomplished. The kitchen knows what it's doing. But the true gems lie on chef Stephen Harris's £65 tasting menu, which must be booked in advance. Harris, who entered the kitchen later in life, has a genuine commitment to locality which makes other people's pronouncements on the subject look hollow. He churns his own butter, and makes soda bread from the butter milk. He boils sea water to make his own salt. He cures his own hams from local pigs. Mostly he just has exquisite taste, partnered with huge experience of gastronomy from around the world. He is not afraid to pick up notions from some of Europe's gastro palaces and use them in a way which dovetails perfectly with the Kentish pub setting.
Start with his own pork scratchings, and curls of his own luscious ham which can give the best Serrano a run for its money. Local oysters will come with pickled cucumber and a tiny pile of caviar. He will bring Japanese technique – a form of his own dashi, made with local seaweed – to bear on the glorious seafood from these parts. There's a perfectly cooked tranche of brill in a smoked herring roe sauce of a seemingly unending depth; the best local lamb breast braised, then breaded and grilled. And onwards it goes. Harris's cooking at The Sportsman manages what so few achieve. It is a true expression of a sense of place. It is subtle, clever and beguiling.
The Sportsman, Faversham Road, Seasalter, Kent. 01227 273 370; thesportsmanseasalter.co.uk. Tasting menu for two £160
13: Tayyabs, London
One of the clearest trends of the past decade has been the growing recognition that non-European food is not one bland homogenous mass; that while Britain's high streets may be full of something called Indian restaurants, there really is no such thing as an easily codified "Indian" culinary tradition. The subcontinent (like China; see the entry for Barshu) is a huge place with cooking styles as diverse as – or even more so – than those in Europe. Goa, Rajasthan, Nepal, Bengal and more have all begun to show what they can do.
It would be pushing it to describe Tayyabs in London's Whitechapel as a direct part of that. It has happily been putting out its full-on brand of Pakistani meat-and-bread-based cookery without the dribbling attentions of restaurant collectors for many years; in 2012 it celebrated its 40th anniversary. But there's no doubt that in the past 10 years its star has been burnished. It has continued to expand and tweak the interior to become, these days, a little flash compared to the simple canteen serving the local community that it once was.
What matters, though, is the food. Venerable chains like Mirch Masala and the Lahore Kebab House, which cook from a similar repertoire, have laid down a challenge. But for many, me included, Tayyabs remains the very best at this sort of stuff.
Its kebabs and, most especially, its dark, sticky, spice-encrusted lamb chops, which arrive issuing ribbons of pungent smoke, are completely compelling; a hands on, heads down, bone-stripping meat fest.
Start with those and then move on to the dry meat curry, a fiery, powerful tangle of long-braised lamb with a flavour that just goes on and on. Indeed it goes on for so long, it's best to go with a close friend, because you will doubtless carry its mark the next morning. The breads are always crisp and fresh and there's a counter full of sweets that will send you on a joyous trip to type two diabetes.
Some people complain about Tayyabs. They say it is noisy, that waiters hurry you in and out and can be offhand and rude, that it isn't as cheap as once it was. All of that may be partially true. Then again the prices used to be so low it felt like larceny. Today those lamb chops cost just £6.20, which is hardly profiteering.
At those prices don't expect frills. Do expect flavour.
Tayyabs, 83-89 Fieldgate Street, London E1. 020 7247 9543; tayyabs.co.uk. Meal for two £30 (BYO)
12: The Wolseley, London
The Wolseley? That grim celeb hang-out? The one that turns up in the gossip columns? That's not a restaurant; that's a scene, surely? And yes, it is indeed all those things. But it was always bound to be. After all it was opened in 2003 by Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, who had turned the Ivy into the ultimate celebrity watering hole. They know a lot about building business by attracting in the faces that everyone wants to spot.
After selling the Ivy and its sister restaurants they took a five-year, contractually enforced break before launching what they refer to as a "café restaurant in the grand European tradition". It occupies a site on Piccadilly a few doors from the Ritz which had been both a bank and a car showroom for the marque whose name it now carries. Celebrity guff aside, it was the most assured opening of that year and hasn't faltered since. All great cities need great restaurants. They need places which do not simply feed its citizens but act as echo chambers for its cultural and political life, without being closed off. The Wolseley has managed to be that.
Indeed, from the moment it started trading, it was hard to imagine how parts of London life had rubbed along without it. It helped that the decor – the grand columns, the Chinese lacquer work, all touched up by David Collins – gave it a certain acquired venerability. But what really mattered was the slick service, and a day-long menu of comfort food.
In truth, the food is probably only about as good as it needs to be. But that easily is more than good enough. It is the place for flaky croissant and for the English fry up at breakfast, for cassoulet or choucroute at lunch, for sachertorte and luscious gateaux in the afternoon, for fruits de mer and Wiener Holstein and a whole lot more besides at dinner. This is a menu which never attempts to reinvent the wheel. It doesn't do innovation. It does homage and for the most part does it beautifully.
There are certain sillinesses. The "U"-shaped air-conditioning housing in the middle created an inner and outer area, and whether they try to deny it or not, funnily enough inside the horseshoe is where you'll always find the faces. (The artist Lucian Freud ate there most days. His table was one inside the horseshoe, and when he died they left it empty draped in a black tablecloth with a single candle guttering upon it). Then there is the £2 cover charge which, given they can feed upwards of 750 people a day, must generate hundreds of thousands a year. Still it's tolerated because it's the Wolseley. London is better off for it being there.
The Wolseley, 160 Piccadilly, London W1. 020 7499 6996; thewolseley.com. Meal for two £40-£150
11 Hawksmoor, London
Britain used to be where steak went to die. It was bizarre. We had – always have had – some of the best beef in the world. We knew how to roast it in joints, on the bone and off. And yet, when it came to slicing the stuff up and cooking it properly, so that it was charred outside, and pink and running within, something went wrong. Steaks in British restaurants were never cut thickly enough. They were never allowed to come to room temperature before cooking, were never seasoned in the right way or introduced to enough roaring flame to do the job. It became a trope in male foodie circles. Those of us who had been lucky enough to experience the American way of steak would gather in small huddles to grumble into our beers about how ill-served we were. God, we must have been dull to listen to.
Every now and then there would be a glimmer of hope, but mostly from some feeble attempt to ape an American style steakhouse that never quite worked. Because it wasn't in America. And then the Hawksmoor group happened. I'm listing the branch in London's Seven Dials here, but the love extends to them all, from the small original in the East End through the version in the City to the glorious art deco sweep of Hawksmoor Air Street, with its fish options.
Hawksmoor is a truly British steakhouse, which bigs up the best of British beef, cuts it thick and cooks it right. A well written menu should be a come on, a shameless flash of thigh. There is, I think, no greater menu than the wall-hung chalkboards at the various Hawksmoors listing the cuts of beef available – the 1.1kg porterhouses, the 900g bone-in prime ribs and so on – to be shared. What really makes Hawksmoor sing, however, is the rest of the menu. Careful thought has gone in to the things that should be offered alongside great beef: the crab on toast or Tamworth belly ribs or roast bone marrow to start, for example; the triple cooked chips, the béarnaise, bordelaise and anchovy hollandaise sauces with which to nuzzle the steaks. The sides of creamed spinach and mash with gravy or roast field mushrooms.
Finally, there is the setting. Hawksmoor are the varnished parquet kings. They have created wood-clad, leather-bound rooms that feel lived in from day one. They hose you down with well made dirty cocktails, and smother you with love from a bunch of achingly hip tattooed waiters who understand why you've come. It's never cheap, but then really good beef shouldn't be. It's a true luxury, something to be treated with care and attention by kitchen and diner alike. Excuse me while I get moist-eyed: Hawksmoor filled a yawning gap in our culinary life.
Hawksmoor Seven Dials, 11 Langley Street, London WC2. 020 7420 9390; thehawksmoor.com. Meal for two £130
